


Death Comes to the Mountain

by strix_alba



Category: Gashlycrumb Tinies - Edward Gorey
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first annual Gashlycrumb Orphanage Picnic-by-the-Sea came to an abrupt end when a shriek pierced the babble of children building haphazard sand castles in the wet grey sand. Clara lifted her head from the painstaking process of lining her castle with shells, just in time to see a flash of color disappear under a wave fifty feet out to sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. July, 1921

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clayray3290](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clayray3290/gifts).



> Dear clayray3290, thank you for the fantastic assignment! I hope you like reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Thank you to sinesofinsanity for the beta~
> 
> This is based on a book about children dying gruesome deaths. If reading about that is upsetting, then this is not the fic for you.

The first annual Gashlycrumb Orphanage Picnic-by-the-Sea came to an abrupt end when a shriek pierced the babble of twenty-odd children, ages five to nine, children building haphazard sand castles in the wet grey sand. Clara lifted her head from the painstaking process of lining her tower with the shells Leo had collected just in time to see a flash of color bobbing underneath a wave fifty feet out to sea.

Their caretaker flew to his feet, pale arms waving. “Maud!” he cried, plunging into the ocean after the vanishing figure.

“Help me!” cried Maud.

Clara scrambled to her feet. She and the other orphans abandoned their play to run down to the shoreline and watch Maud’s arms beating the surface of the water. The caretaker’s lanky form battled the currents as Maud flailed, pushed ever-further from the shore.

“Maud!” shouted the caretaker.

“Maud!” Clara called, adding her voice to the chorus of children as they watched Maud bob helplessly up and down. The caretaker’s shouts grew wearier while Maud’s grew fainter, until the former grew hoarse and the latter faded away altogether. On the shore, the children exchanged wide-eyed stares, while the caretaker’s wife drew them close and covered their eyes. Clara clung to her doll, Esmeralda. She stared at the fading black speck on the horizon, watching it while the children of the Gashlycrumb Orphanage piled back onto the bus, and pressed her nose to the window until the beach was out of sight.

&

“I’ll bet she drowned,” said Prue, when they all lay in their beds that night. The lights had all been turned out, so her voice came to Clara like a spirit through the blackness. “My daddy was a dead-people doctor, an’ he’d this man in his shop whose face had gone all purple and puffy. Eugh.”

A couple of other voices chimed in their expressions of disgust.

“She didn’t drown,” Susan said. “She’s an angel now. That’s what happens when children die.”

“Only if they’re really little, like my baby sister,” said James.

“You don’t have a baby sister,” Prue reminded him.

“Do too! Her name was Emilia, only then she was too good for this world and took Mommy with her to heaven.” James sounded close to tears with sincerity, but then again, he usually did. Clara turned her head, but though he lay a few scant feet from her, she could only make out the top of his hair where a bit of moonlight caught loose strands.

“My angels say that every child goes to heaven. They say I’m going to heaven when it’s my time,” Susan announced.

“Yeah, but if you’re in heaven, you got to die first. And be puffy,” Prue argued, voice shrill and insistent.

“Maybe …" Clara hugged Esmeralda tight. “Maybe Maude didn’t die.”

“I am sure that she did,” said Yorick. “It was very far to swim.”

Clara’s stomach twisted up inside her. She stared at the ceiling again. “There’s selkies all over the place. I read they like to take people, to keep them company. They turn into mermaids and, and,” —

“People don’t turn into mermaids,” interrupted Ernest.

“They do! My mom and dad and their boat, the same thing happened to them,” Clara insisted. It was one of her earliest memories: the sun shining on the pier as she ran out of their vacation house and watched the motorboat with two silhouettes on board go roaring out into the ocean. Neither of her parents, nor the boat, had ever been seen again.

“I suppose they are in heaven,” said Yorick in his prim thoughtful voice.

Susan began to argue, but then the door to the dormitory opened, and a candle floated in on the hand of the caretaker’s wife. “Hush,” she said. “We’ll all talk about Maud in the morning. It’s very sad, but now it is time to sleep.”

&

The beach was supposed to be a magical, carefree place for children, full of light and happiness and sand, but Clara, who could not remember a time when she hadn't associated large bodies of water with the disappearance of her parents, much preferred to stay at home. She had protested vehemently against the whole ordeal, but two factors had contributed to her attendance for the picnic that fateful day. The first had been the sons of the caretaker's wife, recent members of the first graduating class of Matthews Hall University who had returned to the mansion on the hill in order to assist their parents with the care and education of their twenty-six wards. They had bribed her with candy, and a promise that she could bring her doll. Her book of 101 Cookie Recipes, they had insisted she keep at home, lest it become waterlogged.

The second had been Titus.

Clara was but six years old when she first laid eyes on Titus. He had come to the newly opened Gashlycrumb Orphanage two years previously when his parents had been brutally murdered by overenthusiastic debt collectors. Titus, said the somber man who had dropped him off, took after his parents. He pronounced these words in a grim, foreboding tone which sent shivers down Clara's spine as she and Zillah lurked in the next room. They and the other children stared at the small blonde boy; and after a few minutes he began to stare back. The instant his eyes had met hers, Clara had been smitten. How romantically tragic, she thought, to take after one's parents. Time had not lessened this fascination: Titus was, there was no other word for it, swashbuckling, and did things that would have upset Clara had it been anyone else who did them: things like climbing out the second-story window to run along the drainpipe - expressly against the rules - and stealing Clara's recipe book - with a gap-toothed smile - in order to convince her to attend the picnic. So Clara had gone to the beach with the rest, and she and Leo had spent their time watching Titus and George bury each other under the sand rather than playing in the water.

Clara had no such incentives at the present time.

The orphanage had been subdued for several weeks after Maud’s untimely demise, but finally, the caretaker’s wife had suggested an outing on the lake which was situated halfway down the long, winding road from the house to the shore. Eager to prevent another tragedy, the caretaker, his wife, their sons, and a lifeguard who also happened to be the milkman took the twenty-five white-faced children to the dock in the lake down the mountain, where half a dozen canoes awaited them.

“Now,” said the milkman-turned-lifeguard, “Look here. I want you all to look at these two fine young men here. See how they're sitting in the middle of their seats, not climbing all over the place and trying to upset the boat.” The caretaker’s two sons waved at them from where they sat, oars across their laps, in two of the canoes. To Clara’s right, Leo waved back, and to his right, Zillah pushed his hand down.

“Don’t do that,” she hissed.

Leo let his hand drop again. Clara patted him on the shoulder. "Why not?" asked Leo sullenly.

Zillah didn't answer, but she frowned as she looked at the caretaker's sons.

When the milkman was satisfied that the children knew how to behave while they were in the boats, he allowed them to climb in in twos and threes. Titus dashed madly to the first canoe, in which the caretaker sat. Clara and Leo went to join him, but Ida, Fanny, and George got there first. Clara settled into the milkman's boat instead, and found herself joined by Zillah, Leo, and Leo's slightly heavier twin, Victor. At first, she clung to Leo's hand and stared into the murky depths of the lake, waiting for the waters to swallow her whole; but after a while, paddling gently around with the milkman, she began to relax. A breeze stirred the thin mountain air as she turned her face to the cloudy sky, listening to Zillah reciting a nonsense poem they had learned in the spring. If she didn't look, she could almost pretend she was on a wet, uncomfortable sort of swing.

That is, until she heard the commotion at the far side of the pond.

Two canoes, floated in a wash of muddied water, one upright, the other overturned. Next to the overturned boat, three heads bobbed: the bony features of the caretaker, hat lost in the disturbance; and Titus and George, each clinging to one of the caretaker's arms. Clara's heart leapt into her throat. Before her eyes, she saw, not her friends and her guardian, but her parents, and the boat was not a chipped metal canoe but a white motorboat, lost forever. She reached out instinctively for Esmeralda, but, having left her at home, found herself clinging to Zillah instead.

The milkman rushed to steer their boat around, bringing them to the scene of the accident. "Are you all right?" he called to the caretaker.

The caretaker's head bobbed under for a moment, as he attempted to stay afloat with two children stuck to him like leeches. "Fanny and Ida," he gasped, breaking the surface once more, "where are they?" 

Titus released him, and paddled over to Clara's canoe like a dog. Clara held out her hand to him, but just before he reached her, another head — one possessing large quantities of dark, springy hair weighed down by pond water — appeared between him and the canoe.

"Ida!" shrieked Fanny, treading water. "I can't find Ida!" 

&

The clouds which had hung over the lake the day of Ida’s demise gathered thicker as the children went out into the courtyard to play the following afternoon. Clara and Leo sat on a stone bench underneath an apple tree and watched the listless turns that their fellows took around the courtyard. None of them seemed to be much interested in playing, although the caretaker’s two sons tried time and time again to engage them in activities as though unaware of the Ida-shaped vacancy in the yard. Even Fanny, who was usually only matched by Titus for frenetic energy, sat down on the swings after a minute and kicked her feet in the dust.

"I don’t like water," Clara said. It was a woefully inadequate statement, but it was the best she could do at the moment. They had been made to wait on the bus for half an hour while the caretaker, his wife, their two sons, and the milkman dove into the lake, again and again, until they had found Ida. Leo had thoughtfully covered Clara's eyes with his handkerchief, but Clara was possessed of a vivid imagination.

"Me neither," said Leo. "I kept thinking about what Prue said, about her father burying people."

"Please don't," Clara begged him. She had not been able to forget it, either, despite her best intentions. She decided that in order to distract herself, she would pay attention to happier things, and watched Fanny as Quentin joined her.

"Quentin is troubling poor Fanny, isn't she."

Clara jumped and turned around, and Leo yelped. Yorick leaned against the tree behind them, nodding at the swing set.

"How did you get here?" Leo asked.

"I shouldn't like to be spoken to of ghosts when one of my friends had recently joined their number," Yorick said, ignoring him. He brushed bits of tree bark off of the front of his uniform and meandered away. "I shall have to rectify this," he said over his shoulder.

Clara looked at Leo. To her relief, he looked just as puzzled as she.

"Maybe he was in the tree," Clara suggested.

Leo looked up at the high, twisted branches and shuddered. "I hope not. What if he fell on us?"

Clara considered it. Across the yard, Yorick addressed the caretaker’s wife. She nodded at what he said, and walked over to the swing set. “Yorick isn’t that heavy,” said Clara. “Would it hurt a lot?”

Leo shrugged. They watched as the caretaker’s wife spoke to Quentin, then bent closer to examine Fanny. Fanny got up off the swing and staggered forwards, into the waiting hands of the caretaker’s wife. Clara frowned as the caretaker’s wife picked her up and brought her inside. Several other children joined them along the way.

“Is Fanny sick?” Clara heard James ask.

“Why are you carrying her?”

“How come I never get carried anywhere?”

The caretaker’s wife didn’t answer; or if she did, Clara couldn’t hear. She took Fanny inside and shut the door behind her.

&

Fanny didn’t appear at supper that night, nor for playtime afterwards. Clara thought nothing of it until she and the other orphans climbed the steps to go to sleep, and discovered Fanny already in bed, staring at the ceiling. Titus ran over to her immediately. “What are you doing in bed?” he asked. “You missed playing dragons and princesses! I got to decapacitate George.”

Fanny lifted her head. The room was dark and poorly lit, but Clara thought that underneath her chestnut skin, she looked strangely grey. “I tried running around, and I got all dizzy,” she said. “I found one of those slug things from the lake on my leg. I was going to keep it for show and tell, but the nurse wouldn’t let me.”

Clara felt ill at the mention of the leeches. She climbed into bed, tucked in Esmeralda next to her, and listened to the other children as they mumbled to each other, fought over whose pillow was fluffier, and said their prayers to God (in the case of Susan) and the Boogeyman (in the case of Quentin).

“Good night, Fanny. Feel better,” said James.

A chorus of ‘good night’s and ‘feel betters’ followed, and Fanny assured them that she would. As Clara went to sleep, she said a silent good night to Ida and Maud, and was glad that Fanny had not drowned, as well. 

But Fanny did not wake up the following morning.


	2. August and September, 1921

Two weeks into August, rain swept in from the coast, arrived in a hurry and stayed put, caught over the hills. It poured down in fat clusters that reduced the view outside the windows of the mansion on the hill to the appearance of a painting. It was this effect, in fact, that Clara and Leo discovered Xerxes attempting to replicate when they were sent upstairs to find him on the third day of rain. The caretaker’s wife had broken up the fifth scuffle in the last twelve hours, this one between Hector and James over a particular slice of bread, and proclaimed that now was the time of hide-and-go-seek. As only half of the remaining children were present at the time, she had sent messengers to the various parts of the house in an effort to ensure full participation. As soon as Xerxes joined them, Rhonda turned around and leaned her forehead against the wall, covering her eyes. “One, two, three …”

The children scattered, in various states of pent-up kinetic energy, to the four corners of the wind. Clara resigned herself to the physical activity and raced back the way she had come, up the wide, sweeping main staircase. If she followed it all the way up to the top, then turned to the left, there was a broom closet there with enough supplies in it to hide behind. Rhonda’s nasally voice floated up the staircase after her and the other children. She ran as fast as she could, but as she reached the top of the stairs, George pushed past her, and dove into the broom closet before she could get there. Clara turned on the spot, stamping her foot with irritation. She ran down the hall (“twelve, thirteen, fourteen”) and found herself in one of the old servants’ rooms, from when the previous owners had had them. She shut the door behind her and crawled under the bed, wriggling towards the back wall. With the door shut and the blinds already drawn, the dim light wouldn’t be enough to give her away, and if Rhonda didn’t look under the bed too closely, she might not even see her. Her feet kicked cobwebs as she waited. Gross, she thought. Not gross enough to leave her hiding place, not when it was such a good one, but enough that, after the first minute, she began to wish that Rhonda would find her before the dust settled into her dress too badly. The floorboards in the hall creaked several times as Rhonda went by; and then as others tried to make a break for the foyer, having been discovered. Clara turned on her back and examined the wooden slats of the bed above her. Someone before her had begun to carve a skull and crossbones into one of them, but had been interrupted halfway through, so that a skull with half a bone protruding from its temple stared down at her in the dark. Clara shivered. 

Another pair of feet went running past her for the stairs, followed by Rhonda shouting. The shout abruptly turned into a shriek, followed by a series of thumps on the stairs. Clara twisted around and edged closer to the foot of the bed, head up and heart pounding.

On the stairs below her, voices rose out of shocked silence into a murmur, then a babble. “Amy!” Rhonda cried.

Clara froze — what had happened? Should she come out of hiding?

The heavy footsteps of the caretaker’s wife came pounding up the stairs. “The game is over. Come out,” she said. Her voice shook. 

&

The church had been built closer to sea level, a small stone structure next to a grassy cemetery cut into the mountainside. Clara stood in front of four small headstones lined up in a row, one name newly engraved on each. She thought that she should probably cry like the other little girls, and wish that their friends were above the ground (or on land again, in Maud’s case) but she couldn’t bring herself to it. Instead, she looked around at the other children, at the caretaker and his family and the milkman and the nurse, and felt a vague sense of wrongness about the whole affair. Amy should have braided her hair for the funeral, and Fanny should have tugged on the braid, trying to make it stand on end like a chipmunk tail. 

There was none of that. Titus might have taken over hair-pulling duties, but he stood in front of Clara and dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief Leo had produced out of his pocket several minutes earlier. The caretaker’s two sons looked on with blank faces, the caretaker’s wife sobbed into a dish towel, and the caretaker himself rested his hand on Quentin’s thin shoulders and stared pensively at the gravestones, eyes hollow.

&

After that, no one much felt like going on a nature hike, but since the orphanage had opened three years ago, it had been a tradition to take one of the trails up through the woods to the top of the mountain at the end of every August. The caretaker’s wife was a great believer in the power of routine for getting things back to normal, and so, the very next week, on a nature hike the children went. The rain had stopped only that morning, and for the first time in several weeksit seemed as though the sun would come out. The caretaker’s wife sometimes joked that the mountains were perpetually shrouded in fog in order to make themselves as much like the underworld as possible. Quentin and Xerxes latched onto this idea like burrs (not like leeches; Clara was over leeches), but Clara, not understanding why mountains would want to be like anything besides mountains, usually laughed nervously if the subject was brought up.

Regardless of their resemblance or lack thereof to anything on foggy days, on the day of the nature hike, sufficient light illuminated the trail that the hikers cast shadows which stretched and rippled across the muddy ridges of the trail. The children proceeded up the trail in pairs for safety, but with Neville at home again, daydreaming, Clara found herself without a hiking buddy. 

The orphans ascended the mountain in high spirits: for there were a great many varieties of candy and baked goods in the knapsack full of food, which Boris insisted was his turn to carry, ready to consume its contents once they reached the summit. So high-spirited were they, in fact, that the caretaker and his wife had to several times reprimand them for straying from the path. “Not unless it’s too muddy to cross directly,” the caretaker warned them. Clara obeyed these instructions to the best of her ability and held her breath whenever Titus decided to run straight across a particularly muddy part of the path. At one point, his shoe became stuck in the mud, leading to tumult while the caretaker’s younger son waded in and braced himself against a rock in order to pull him out. When the confusion had been settled, they all returned to their buddies, only for James to raise his hand and announce that he had lost Quentin.

The caretaker’s elder son clapped his hands. In a big, booming voice, he said, “All right! Everyone, stick with your buddies. Spread out, but make sure that you can still see each other through the trees. We’ll find him. Quentin!” he called. “Quentin!”

Clara’s stomach sank. More people missing. People vanishing didn’t have a very good track record of turning up lately. She hardly noticed when Titus took her hand to tug her off the path, calling for Quentin. They met up with George and Olive, traipsing through the underbrush as the sun came out in force for the first time in weeks. Titus bounded ahead; face alight with a misplaced sense of adventure, leading Olive and George in the charge so Clara took it upon herself to make sure she could still see the caretaker’s black-clad figure through the trees. As they ventured in wider and wider sweeps away from the path, the orphans and their caretakers called out to each other — "Not over here!" "Bees! Bees!" "I found a pawprint! What's that mean?" — without success. 

Olive grabbed Clara to steady herself as she narrowly avoided a concealed patch of mud. "Watch out," she said. Clara nodded. She kept her eyes on the mud as they circled around it towards another thick patch of trees, calling out, and that was when Clara saw a tuft of blond hair sticking out of the mud. She stumbled on a rock, pushing Olive sideways.

"What was that for?" Olive complained.

Clara tugged on the now-grubby plaid of her sleeve. "Look!" she said, voice shaking.

Olive stopped and looked. Her hands flew to her mouth. "George and Titus, come back here now," she said.

Titus came pushing back through the foliage with a crash. He nearly plowed straight into Clara, tried to halt his progress, and fell, face-first, onto the mud. Clara rushed forwards without thinking, seizing his hand to drag him upright before the mud could claim him as well. The effort left her weak in the knees; and when she checked to make sure he was all right, she saw that he looked as shaken as she felt.

None of them spoke. Clara clung to Titus’ hand. “We should … we have to tell them we found him,” she whispered.

Olive nodded. She threw back her head. “ _We found him_!” she bellowed. “We found Quentin! He’s turned into a bog-man.”

The frantic searching and calling ceased, replaced by a mass scramble through the trees to the site of the tragedy. In the midst of all of the crashing through of leaves and breaking of twigs, Clara thought she heard another, heavier body moving through the trees. She stepped away from her fellow orphans as they arrived on the scene. With one hand shading her eyes, she scanned the woods for the source of the noise. To the left, nothing but other people. To the right, nothing but other people and a long-faded trail marker. Straight ahead, Boris, chugging along to join them.

Boris with his backpack full of food. And behind Boris, two brown, shaggy bears on all fours.

Clara shrieked.

Half of the children turned around, following her gaze. The fortunate of them were those who had responded quickly to Olive’s alarm. Their view of the event was buffered by the heads of those who had lagged behind, those who had an unobstructed view as the bears tried to remove the backpack from Boris to get at the sugar within. Poor Boris, who had only wanted to be helpful when he offered to carry the food, didn’t stand a chance.

Clara looked away. Beside her, Titus’ teeth started to chatter, as he stared with eyes the size of hubcaps. He did not look even remotely brave. Clara reached up to cover his eyes; he pressed his fingers over hers, and Clara used her other hand to shield her own vision as the bears devoured their newly liberated ginger snaps.

The whole party remained frozen in place until the bears had finished their feast and left. When they had left, Clara opened her eyes. She sank to the ground, breath coming so fast she felt dizzy. The caretaker led them all back onto the path, giving both Quentin and Boris’ remains a wide berth. No one suggested that they try to continue on towards the mountaintop for their picnic.

“That’s two of us in fifteen minutes,” Zillah told Clara, as they proceeded back down the mountain. “That’s not supposed to be normal, is it?”

Clara shook her head, twirling her fingers in her hair. “A lot of things happen in the woods.”

“Not like this!”

Clara shrugged unhappily. “I don’t know. Maybe.” 

&

On the last Sunday before summer ended, the children of the orphanage were driven into town, in order to celebrate the start of a new school year. Clara thought that Zillah, and perhaps Yorick, were the only ones who considered the occasion one worth celebrating, but all of the orphans took the opportunity to wander about town, and to feel very grown up. All the orphans, that is, save for Neville and Olive. Neville had proclaimed that town was boring and he was feeling out of sorts, anyway, and Olive had wanted to finish the baby blanket she’d been working on for most of the summer. But everyone else who mattered was there.

Clara, Leo, and Victor went to the toy store. Clara perused the selection of miniature kitchens and fake foods, leaving the twins to explore the trains and airplanes until they were in danger of being expelled from the shop. With that done, they went into the park, where they discovered Zillah and Kate, sitting under a tree and making fairy houses out of sticks and leaves. Girl stuff, Victor pronounced it, and dragged his brother away to climb the tree under which they sat. Clara sat down and joined Zillah and Kate in making “fairies” by poking twigs through flowers. From above, Leo looked on with poorly-disguised longing. 

Several other children passed by as they played. Clara waved at Una as she and Winnie chased each other down the pathway through the park, laughing. They met up with Prue just outside the gates, next to a row of dark-paneled buildings across the street. Clara made her stick-fairy hop along the ground towards the small heap of grass which Kate had constructed; when she looked up next, Una and Winnie had worked their way over to the weed-choked fountain near the park entrance, and Prue was on the steps of a bar with dark figures pressed against the smoky windows.

“The great Oberon has arrived! Prepare the feast!” Zillah’s magnificent daffodil fairy soared through the air, landing on Clara’s hand, and Clara went back to their game. When she looked up next, all three of their friends were gone. Clara thought nothing of it until, some time later, Hector wandered over to them.

“I can’t find Prue,” he said. “What are you doing?”

What they were doing was laying siege to a tree in which the enemy fairies lived, while Victor defended it with small pinecones from above, and Leo with sticks from below. “We’re having a battle,” said Kate.

Hector shuffled sideways towards the tree. “Can I play?” he asked.

Zillah edged away from him, taking her store of leaves and fairies with her. “Sorry. We’re already almost winning.”

Hector looked so disappointed that Clara took pity on him. “I saw Prue over there before.” She pointed to the storefronts across the street from the park entrance.

Hector sighed. He turned away from them with shoulders slumped, and adjusted his cap. “Thanks,” he said. 

Victor took advantage of the distraction to rain pinecones down on his opponents. Clara shook the stray flakes out of her eyes and picked up her “sword”, holding it against the body of her makeshift fairy so that he could defend her against the evil tree people. The battle culminated in a prolonged chase around the park, Kate shouting and Zillah and Clara throwing flowers at Leo and Victor, and it ended when their shouts were joined by voices emanating from an alley at the end of the street. Clara let sword and fairies fall to the ground; beside her, her friends did the same.

“Did that sound like Hector?” asked Zillah.

“I hope not,” said Kate.

They ventured closer to the alley. As they did, Clara noticed the police car parked in front of the bar where she had last seen Prue. Clara had no fear of police cars, or of being taken in to the station, but she was arrested by the sight of the caretaker, bending over to speak to several officers as an ambulance pulled up. Two more police officers emerged from the shadows of the alley, dragging with them a struggling thug.

“We’re going to need another stretcher!” shouted one of the police officers. The caretaker flew to his side.

Clara and Leo looked at each other, Leo held out his hand for safety, and together, they crossed the street. They were joined on the other side by Yorick and Desmond, who had been wandering in that direction and had also been attracted by the attention. “What happened?” Clara asked the caretaker. 

The caretaker patted her on the head. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t prevent it,” he said.

Leo’s grip on Clara’s hand tightened. “Prevent what?”

The caretaker ran a gloved finger along his eyes. “I’m afraid that Prue and Hector have gone beyond the veil.”

Clara frowned. “What does that mean?”

The door to the bar opened, and several men bearing a stretcher made their way down the steps. Leo tugged on Clara’s sleeve. “They’re gone, too,” he said. 

&

All of the children staggered off the bus in silence. Clara was somewhat comforted by the fact that no one else knew what to say, either. She tried to ascend the stairs to the bedroom, but the eldest son of the caretaker stopped her and the other orphans. “I’m afraid you can’t go in there right now, kids,” he said.

“Why not?” demanded Titus. “It’s time to wash up for supper.”

The caretaker’s son pasted on a smile. “There’s been a sewing accident,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t let you in until my sainted mother has finished cleaning up the mess.”

“What do you mean?” asked Una. “What kind of sewing accident?”

“What’s that?” Zillah pointed at the piece of fabric in his hand.

The caretaker’s son extended his hand. In it, he held Olive’s half-finished baby blanket. A heavy splash of dark red covered one corner. Clara swallowed.

&

Supper was a silent affair. The children usually joined their guardians and the housekeeping staff around a long, heavy table in the dining room, with just enough seats set out for all, and just enough room for everyone to sit without bumping elbows or having to send telegrams to reach their neighbors. But with the recent deaths, the distances between the place settings had begun to stretch thin of late, although housekeeper had done her best to put away all of the chairs which were no longer in use. That night, Clara simply tried to avoid looking at the empty space next to her: the housekeeper had been so busy cleaning up after Olive, there hadn’t been time to remove her chair.

Clara paid attention to Zillah instead. “I think you were right after all,” she said. Even at a whisper, her voice sounded too loud around the table.

Zillah spooned soup into her mouth like her life depended on it. “I know. I wish I wasn’t,” she said, and sighed.


	3. October to December, 1921

The first thing that they needed to do, according to Titus’ mystery books, was assemble their information in a “case file”. Titus said that it should be a leather-bound reporter’s notebook, but since there were very few of those in the Gashlycrumb Orphanage, they made do with one of Clara’s recipe books. As fond of Titus as she was, Clara was at first loathe to surrender it to the cause, especially since she had half-filled the pages with the recipes that sounded the best from the extensive collection in the library. However, Zillah reminded her that not only would she be helping Titus; she could also be preventing future deaths.

Rain fell gently outside the window of the study in which the four children had ensconced themselves, lending an air of mystery to the proceedings. Evidence, wrote Titus, in his big irregular handwriting at the top of one page. He sat back and gazed at the page with satisfaction.

“What’s the evidence?” asked Leo, in tones of hushed reverence.

”The boat, the rug where Amy fell, and the leech,” Zillah rattled off. 

Titus wrote these down. “Wow. You’re good at this,” he said. Zillah looked as though she were trying to not appear as pleased as she was, with only slight success.

“Olive’s awl,” said Clara. She did not want to think about it, but she also didn’t want to be left out, not when there was a chance that Titus would compliment her, too.

“Don’t forget the backpack that Boris had on. That’s important,” Leo chimed in. He seemed to have the same idea.

When they had filled all of the ingredient lines on the notebook page, they moved on to the suspects. “The caretaker’s boys,” Zillah said at once. “I don’t like them.”

“Why?” asked Leo.

Zillah shook her head, sending her hair flying. “They don’t care about us. They’re just here because their parents want them to be. I’ll bet they’re happy about everyone dying, even if they aren't doing it themselves."

"Well, if you're going to do that, then you've got to put down the caretaker and the missus," Leo said. "Otherwise, it isn't fair."

"And the butler!" Titus said.

Clara giggled. He stuck his tongue out at her. "What? It's always a butler, or a serving maid."

Zillah took the recipe book away from him before he could write either of those down. "We don't have a butler. Or a serving maid."

"There's the housekeeper," Clara said. Titus looked pleased. "We can write her down."

"The mailman," Leo added.

Titus snatched the book back from Zillah and resumed writing. "Those are good. I like those. Now we've got to start watching them. Sooner or later, someone will do something suspicious, and then we'll get them!"

Clara fiddled with her doll, braiding and rebraiding Esmeralda's hair. It seemed like a good plan to her, although she wasn't completely clear on some of the finer points. "What do you mean, watch them?"

"Follow them around and make sure they don't notice you doing it," Titus explained. "And make sure you've got an excuse for if they catch you."

Clara smiled weakly, unwilling to stem the tide of his determination with her own silly nerves. "Oh," she said.

"You can follow the missus," Leo offered. "She's around the house all the time, anyway."

"I was going to say that," groused Titus. "I'll watch the caretaker. He goes all sorts of weird places, I'll bet."

Zillah sighed. "Fine. I'll guard the housekeeper."

"And I get the caretaker's sons." Leo got to his feet, stretching and puffing out his chest. "Let's go!" 

&

The four amateur detectives stuck to their schedules with unparalleled determination, fuelled by fear for the lives of their friends. Clara, despite her reservations, found it easier than she had anticipated to monitor the caretaker's wife. Over the course of the next six weeks, she learned that the caretaker's wife spent most of her time with the orphans; and in her free time, she knitted sweaters or read books in the library. "What books?" Titus asked eagerly.

"Grown-up ones about farming," Clara assured him. "Nothing about how to kill people."

Titus's shoulders slumped in disappointment. His efforts had likewise proved fruitless; the caretaker was solitary, spent time with his sons and wife on the evenings when he was not with the children, and did nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, none of their suspects did anything remotely suspicious, but then again, no one had died in the last six weeks, either.

Then the caretaker's eldest son decreed that the children ought to help him and his brother rake the lawn before the snow set in. The process involved raking the leaves in the walled-in yard into piles; then the adults would toss the leaves over the edge of the wall, down into the ravine below. Clara thought that the worst thing about this particular chore was the enormous rake that she had to use; but she quickly discovered her error when, in the midst of cleaning the edge of the property, Una slipped and fell down one of the drainage holes in the corner of the courtyard. Her rake clattered to the ground, and Clara and her friends went back to their book of evidence. Titus decreed that they needed to continue watching their suspects, and start searching for evidence. Zillah reminded him of who had called for an investigation in the first place, then made the same decree.

The very next day, a blizzard trapped the occupants of the mountain house inside. The adults spent much of the next day and a half thinking of things to do to contain the restless orphans. Clara, quelling her fear of discovery and focusing her thoughts on Titus and preventing any more beds from being emptied, took advantage of the distraction and crept into the study which the caretaker's wife used. She sifted through her knitting, but found nothing more deadly than a set of double-pointed needles. Zillah switched her attention to the caretaker's sons. Clara wasn't sure whether it was a personal obsession, or evidence that she simply wasn't sharing, but whatever it was, none of their increased vigilance prevented Rhonda from going up in flames when she went out to bring in more wood for the hearth fire in early November.

"How? The wood out there isn't lit; that's why she was bringing it inside?" Titus paced the floor of the playroom, hands behind his back. Clara took notes in her recipe book, just in case he needed them. "There's no way that was an accident!"

"Someone should call the police," Zillah said.

Leo shook his head. "I asked the housekeeper. She said the police can't come up, on account of the snow. Then she made me listen to her complain about not being able to get back to her own house." He made a face. "She's scary."

"Hm …." said Clara, and wrote that down, too. 

Titus paced around and looked over her shoulder. "Hey! That's what I just said! Good."

Clara smiled.

Her smile lasted about as long as it took for Ernest to choke to death on the peach cobbler that the caretaker's wife brought out for dessert the next week: that is to say, about a minute and a half. The sight sent Susan into one of her fits, right at the dinner table; though the caretaker’s wife and the housekeeper rushed the children out of the room posthaste, Clara heard her babbling about seeing angels until the caretaker reopened the doors to the dining room and informed them, head bowed, that Susan was no more. 

After that, smiles became a rare sight around the Gashlycrumb Orphanage. With so many of their number deceased, dinners moved to the small dining room on the second floor, and Neville had to be roused from his languor so that the unused beds could be moved to the far wall and the children could remain closer together. The pages of Clara's recipe book filled with a combination of Titus' sloppy handwriting and Clara's own neater print: names of their late companions, who had been with them when they died, and the Leo's increasingly far-fetched explanations for each death.

“Una?”

“Una never looks where she’s going when she’s running.”

“What about Rhonda? What did he write for Rhonda, that she tripped and scraped a book of matches to hard against the wood pile?” Zillah knelt behind Clara and Titus, leaning over their hunched shoulders to read the book.

Titus flipped the page. “Maybe she tried to test the wood to see if it was dry enough,” he read.

“She could’ve,” Leo said.

“And James?”

Titus twisted around, eyes wide. “James is dead? He just has a cold, right?”

“I heard it was a fever. I tried to get into the dormitory, and the caretaker’s son told me not to go in there, James was very sick,” Clara said.

Zillah shook her head. “He had a cold, but then someone gave him the bottle of lye instead. I heard the caretaker talking to him when I went to get my hairbrush.”

“He could have taken it by accident,” Leo said, but even he looked unconvinced. “It looks like the cough syrup when it’s in the bottle …” 

&

They agreed to swap their targets; maybe one had missed something that the next person would catch. For this reason, Clara went to the dormitory, where she had heard from Winnie that the caretaker’s eldest son had been seen last. She pushed open the heavy wooden door and peeked inside.

“Hello?” she said.

“Clara? Is that you?” she heard.

Clara slipped into the room, letting the door fall shut behind her. The room was dark; no lights had been lit, and the overcast sky did little to alleviate the gloom. In the bed next to her own, she saw a small lump with a dark head sticking out of the covers. “Neville?”

“Yes,” Neville sighed. “Come here. I’ve got to tell you something.”

Clara moved closer. She and Neville weren’t the best of friends; still, they got along well enough. She sat down on the bed next to him. “Yes?”

Neville turned his face towards her. Clara was shocked to see how thin he had become. “Clara …” Neville said.

“Yes?”

“I’m so … bored …” he sighed, voice hardly a whisper. He closed his eyes.

Clara felt a chill run through her. She placed her hand over his mouth to see if he was still breathing, but by now, she was hardly even surprised when she felt nothing.

&

The hour was one in the afternoon on December thirteenth, and in the play room, Zillah was making her report. Using an easel and poster paper commandeered from the arts and crafts room, she had sketched out a map of the mansion in purple crayon, and drawn over it in red. "This is where the caretaker went the last week. I sort of drew squiggles when he went somewhere I wasn't supposed to go."

Clara looked over her shoulder to make sure that no one was listening, but, unusually, they had the play room to themselves. Most of the other children had gone out to make snow angels in a nearby field; Titus had gone with them to continue his watch. "The scary son doesn’t do very much. He mostly stays in his room. I went to the post office with him three times." She leaned in closer to whisper, "I think he's writing letters to his girlfriend."

Leo wrinkled his nose. "Ew. Why would he do that?"

Zillah cleared her throat. "But he wasn't doing anything weird?"

Clara shook her head. "But maybe," — she stopped and listened. Someone, somewhere near the front of the house, was banging. It stopped for a moment. "Maybe," — and started again, louder this time. She, Leo, and Zillah listened. The banging resolved itself into heavy, booted footfalls; a moment later, the door to the playroom burst open. Desmond spilled in, tracking snow everywhere, red-cheeked and out of breath.

"Leo!" he cried.

Leo sat up straighter.

Desmond leaned against the doorframe, panting. "We was … we were … playing … by … the tracks," he panted. A slimy, leaden weight gathered in the pit of Clara's stomach. "Playing by the tracks, Yorick and Victor and me, and the Missus told us to get away from there 'fore one of us was kilt, but Victor din't hear, on account of there being a train whistle, and … and …" His face crumpled. He rushed across the creaking floor and threw his well-padded, dripping arms around Leo. Leo froze, face white as the snow sliding onto his shoulders from Desmond's hat. "Waaaaaaah," Desmond cried.

&

 

Leo had been gone for fifteen minutes when something occurred to Clara. She stood up, dropping the book of cakes in which she had been trying to find solace. “Leo!” she shouted. “Leo, I thought of something!” Someone who had been at the scene of nearly every death. Someone strange, who appeared and disappeared seemingly without a trace.

She could not find him in the playroom, nor in the study, and he had not been in the library with her. She found him, finally, on a cushioned chair in the parlor, with his hands folded around a small tin. “Leo, I just realized,” she gasped, out of breath from running around the house. 

Leo looked at her, pale and curiously untroubled for one who had just lost a sibling. “Hello,” he said.

Clara stopped. “Leo, are you all right? What’s that?” She pointed at the tin.

He swallowed, winced, and held it out to her. “I missed Victor, and it’s only been thirty minutes.”

Clara took the tin. Her hands went clammy and cold as she read the label. “Tacks? Where did you even get them? Where did they go?”

Leo smiled. “I ate them. They’re kind of gross.” He stuck out his tongue.

“Why?” Clara started to cry. “Leo, I think I just figured out who’s killing everyone, you can’t go now! I think it might be Yorick!”

Leo shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’ll miss you too.” His face grew paler. “Goodbye.” 

Clara was still standing there, watching him, when the caretaker came bursting in.

&

Over the past few weeks, it had become the habit of the investigative quartet, turned trio, to compare their notes over tea in the playroom. At first, Clara had been pleased to learn that Titus, though loud and prone to action, could be a gentleman when it came to tea manners. Lately, this had been less important than the things that he had to say about the case, guiding them along with the help of his mystery books as best he knew how. This guidance had suggested a pair of fresh eyes, and so Titus had, with some reluctance, recruited George to replace Leo in their search for the murderer.

The clock on the wall chimed half-past. Clara added another sugar cube onto the already wobbling tower on her plate. “Where is he?” Zillah asked Titus.

“I don’t know,” Titus said.

The door to the playroom opened, and all three children turned to greet George. “Finally!” said Zillah.

It was not George. “Do you know where the rest of the children are?” asked the caretaker’s wife.

At the tone of her voice, Titus dropped his teacup back into its saucer with a clank. “What happened?”

The caretaker appeared in the doorway behind her. “I’ve wired for an ambulance,” he said. “I don’t know yet if the road will have cleared enough, but it’s all I can do for him.”

“Is it George?” asked Titus.

The caretaker’s wife and the caretaker exchanged glances, telling Clara all that she needed to know. She reached out to pat Titus on the arm; it was all that she could do.

“I don’t know what he was doing there, but I found George under the rug in the small sitting room,” said the caretaker’s wife. “I tried to untangle him, but I fear it was too late. I can only be the bearer of more bad news.”

“Desmond and Xerxes are in the arts and crafts room,” said Zillah dully. “And Yorick and Winnie went out to play with Kate in the snow.” 

Titus pushed Clara’s hand off of his arm. He pulled his knees up towards his chest and hugged them, staring at the sugar bowl with bright eyes and a deep frown.

“Yorick was out in the snow when George died,” Clara said. She scooped the sugar cube tower back into its bowl and joined Titus in its contemplation, mind whirling

&

Clara spent the next few days alone, after that. It was easier; Zillah had her face buried in one or other of the books from the orphanage library’s true crime section; and the other children kept to their own hushed silences in the nearly empty house.

Almost all of the other children. “I’ve been sent from Titus,” said Yorick. “I was to inform you that he would like to speak to you in the hall outside the caretaker’s office.”

“What for?” Clara still did not fully trust Yorick. Though he had no more motive for murder than any of their other suspects — all of whom remained suspicion-free — the sight of his pointed, well-scrubbed face still made her uneasy.

“I believe he is in trouble, and awaiting punishment,” said Yorick. He passed by her, whistling, and turned the corner towards the old servants’ quarters.

When Clara went, she did indeed find Titus, kicking his feet on a stool outside the caretaker’s office. “What did you do this time?” she asked.

Titus shrugged. “I thought it might still be worth following the caretaker, just on a whim, you see? Just in case he did murder George. I found him and his wife about to go for a walk. I went out after them, and hid behind the trees so they wouldn’t notice me. They had a very funny kind of conversation. She wants their sons gone, and he wants her to leave too, so she’ll be safe — it’s like they think there’s a murderer ‘round here, too — but she says no, she’s ‘made her choice’. Those exact words.” Titus wrinkled his brow.

“That doesn’t sound very odd,” Clara said.

“But then the caretaker said,” — here Titus attempted to imitate the caretaker’s sonorous voice, with little success — “he said, ‘I pitied them so much. To be taken from their parents so tragically, at such young age … I only wanted to make things easier for them.’ And then his wife said, ‘It’s not your job. It’s never been.’” Titus looked up at Clara and bit his lip. “Don’t that sound funny?”

Clara was forced to concede that yes, all things considered, the caretaker and his wife did have the occasional odd conversation. She had thus far put it down to them being adults, whose minds and motives were unclear at best.

“And then … and then there was the most awful scream. I jumped, I couldn’t help it. They both ran off the trail, and I followed ‘cause I didn’t want to get left alone, and there was Kate.” He held his hands up, palms out, and looked up at Clara helplessly. “She had an axe, sticking right out of her stomach! And all the snow around her was red. It didn’t even look real. The caretaker said to wait here for him, and he’d come talk to me about sneaking around.” He folded his hands in his lap.

Clara made a decision. Given how frightened he looked — she could remember a time when she had thought he wasn’t afraid of anything, and if she hadn’t been so sad she might have laughed at her old self — there was only one thing for her to do. She sat down on the ground next to him. “I’ll wait with you,” she said.

Titus looked as though he didn’t know how to react. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s nice of you.”

She patted his shoe. They waited in silence. The clock in the caretaker’s office chimed. Below them, Clara could hear Desmond’s heavy footsteps, and Winnie’s lighter ones, as they ran to the kitchen in the hopes that the housekeeper might slip them a snack for teatime. They didn’t yet know that Kate was dead, Clara thought. How funny.

A sweep of skirts appeared before her eyes. Clara looked up, and up, and up, until from her position on the floor, the face of the caretaker’s wife came into view. In her hands, she held a square parcel. “This just came in the post for you,” she said to Titus. “Would you like to open it?”

“For me?” Titus asked.

The caretaker’s wife stretched a smile across her tired face. “Yes, for you. A late delivery.” She handed him the package, then turned suddenly. “Clara, I think I heard some of your friends begging the housekeeper for sweets. Why don’t you go and join them?” Her tone brooked no room for argument. Clara looked longingly at Titus. Titus shook the package, holding it up to his ear to see what was inside. His face was alight with excitement. “Go on,” said the wife of the caretaker.

&

Clara was taking tea with Winnie and Desmond when she heard the bang two floors above.


	4. January and February, 1922

Clara had never understood Neville’s depression. She thought it was merely laziness, unwillingness to lift a finger to help himself even if it meant dying emaciated in bed.

To be quite clear, she still didn’t understand. Neville’s ennui had come about suddenly at the age of eight, a year after he had arrived at the orphanage. He had never had one of his closest friends explode in the third-floor hallway (not that she was aware of anyway). Clara, on the other hand, had a solid excuse.

“The caretaker is going to take us sleighing today,” Zillah told her. 

Clara shook her head. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Titus liked sleighing,” she explained.

So Zillah had felt her forehead, because that’s what one was supposed to do when a friend had fallen ill, and gone out sleighing with Desmond and Winnie. Clara hugged Esmeralda tight to her chest, and stared out the window. Occasionally, she would sigh. 

&

Zillah and Winnie and the caretaker returned from the sleigh ride. They had successfully managed to navigate the mountainside slopes without falling off the sleigh and dying. Desmond, on the other hand, had not.

Clara could not bring herself to care. 

&  
January dawned quietly, and Clara still could not make herself eat anything but soup, or convince herself to get out of bed. She lay there, perusing the case files and memorizing recipes, while Zillah, Yorick, Winnie, and Xerxes marched down to the first floor in order to take lessons from the caretaker’s younger son in reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the end of the “school” day, Zillah would return to the third-floor dormitory and go over the notes with Clara. In the evenings, she and Winnie would help Clara over to the small dining room to sit at table with the rest of them, as she was by now far too weak to walk that far by herself.

On one particularly frozen Thursday afternoon, the housekeeper had moved Clara to the windowsill while she changed the sheets. She was copying down a recipe for butterscotch-ginger muffins when Zillah marched over to her, head held high. Clara sighed.

“Stop sighing, please,” Zillah said. 

Clara stopped writing. She held her pen over the inkwell, heedless of the stains that the dripping ink might cause. “What?”

“And stop making such a fuss. It’s been a month, and everyone still has to take care of you. It isn’t fair! I was friends with Titus, too, and I miss him and everyone else just as much as you,” Zillah continued. It seemed that she had had enough, and would have gone on, but at that moment, she was cut off by a loud crack from overhead. Clara looked out the window and peered down at the sheet of ice which had parted company from the roof and landed on the lawn. Beneath the deep rectangular indent, Clara could see a small figure pressed into the ice below, pointed hat visible only as a blur. 

"Zillah," said Clara, pressing her nose to the windowpane. "Was Winnie wearing the elf hat that you gave her for her birthday today?"

Zillah set her books down on the table and ran over to the window. "I think so …"

An even smaller figure, one above the ice, walked over to the ice sheet, looked down at Winnie, and turned his pointed face up towards the roof. Clara scowled.

&

Zillah’s words from the day that Winnie had been crushed by ice stuck with Clara. She discovered, as the days went by, and Zillah spent less and less time with her, that gazing at the words in her book upon which Titus had written no longer provided her with the comfort which she sought from them. So it was that, the following Saturday, Clara decided to get up. She could not walk on her own, and so she left Esmeralda in her bed and crawled across the floor to the library; this being the location at which the caretaker was most likely to be found at five o’clock on a Saturday night. Though his face grew long at the sight of her feebly pushing open the door, he agreed to carry her to Zillah.

“I believe that she and the other two children went to explore the cellars,” he said, as they descended the stairs. “Xerxes was fascinated by the liquor room.”

Clara nodded along, although to tell the truth, she scarcely listened to the words. She had other things to consider. “Is Yorick with them?” she asked.

The caretaker lifted the heavy iron handle to the basement and heaved on it. The door scraped along the stone tiles, and cold air wafted from the basement. The black beyond the steps was alleviated, however, by the thin light of a gas lamp; and the silence broken by a thin, wavering song.

The caretaker’s arms tightened around Clara as they descended the stairs. “Xerxes? Yorick? Zillah?” he called.

“Just me,” said Zillah.

Clara lifted her head from the caretaker’s shoulder and looked around. The cellar walls were high, stacked with rows and rows of bottles, strange-shaped and glittering, from the floor to the ceiling. A lamp stood on a cask by the stairs; its light illuminated the next room, where a number of barrels appeared to have been upset; and beyond that, darkness.

“Zillah?” the caretaker repeated.

Something rustled behind the cask in the liquor room. The caretaker set Clara down. She staggered over to the cask, and fell to the ground, too weak to move. When she lifted her eyes, she saw a half-empty bottle, accompanied by a pair of legs. Clara propped her head up on her hand, and then she could see Zillah properly.

“I found her,” Clara said to the caretaker.

“Yorick and Xerxes are further in,” said Zillah. Her voice had a strange, dreamy quality to it. The caretaker rushed off into the darkness, not bothering to take another light.

“What happened?” Clara asked Zillah.

Zillah pointed to the crystal bottle next to her. “That was my mother’s favorite,” she murmured. “After my father left for the trenches, she bought lots of it. I used to collect the tops.”

Clara examined the bottle, but it looked like any number of others on the shelves. Perhaps she just didn’t know enough about them to tell the difference. “But what about Xerxes? Did Yorick get him?”

Zillah laughed. “There are a lot of mice in the cheese room. They thought Xerxes was cheese. Yorick had nothing to do with it, he was out of there so fast.” She lifted the bottle to her lips and took another sip. “He went out of there too fast, and knocked over all the barrels. They fell …” She gestured, patting the empty air with her hand. “Boom, boom, boom. I had to climb over them to get out here. Then …”

Clara waited. Zillah shrugged.

The caretaker came back into the light, climbing over the casks.

“Yes?” Clara prompted.

Zillah sighed, deflating like a punctured soccer ball. “Then I got tired.” She set the bottle down next to her, and leaned against the cask, as if that was explanation enough.

&

Zillah woke up one morning in early March feeling queasy. She lay with her eyes closed for a few minutes, hands folded on her stomach, letting the morning creep up on her through the windows. "Good morning, Clara," she said, without much enthusiasm.

There was no answer.

Zillah opened her eyes. Perhaps she hadn't been loud enough. "Good morning, Clara," she repeated.

There was no answer.

Zillah sat up. There lay Clara, three beds down, with Esmeralda lying on top of the covers next to her. Her hair fanned out in a dark, snarled halo around her head, and she had fallen asleep with a frown on her face. "Clara," Zillah insisted. "It's time to wake up." She climbed out of bed, shivering. The floorboards stung her feet with cold as she padded over to the other bed, and shook Clara by the shoulder. "Good morning, Clara," she said.

Still no answer.


	5. March 15th, 1922

“More gin, Esmeralda? Yes, please,” Zillah mumbled to the threadbare doll sitting across the little play table. She didn’t wait for the doll to respond before she refilled both of their teacups. She put the bottle down in the middle of the table and lifted her cup in a toast. “Cheers.”

She drained her cup. The gin made her gag, but she thought it must be like the vegetables her mother had always made her eat: the things that were good for you never tasted as good as the things that weren’t. And they were often kept in cellars. Root cellars, wine cellars; the idea was the same, right? With the house more or less empty, and the caretaker locked into his study with grief for much of the time, it had been easy to find herself wandering around the wine cellar. From there, it had been even easier to remember her mother, reassuring Zillah that yes she was all right, and her reassurances that sometimes drinking things made her feel better.

Zillah would have liked to feel better. She set down her cup and lifted the cup that belonged to Clara’s doll. “What? You don’t want yours? That’s not very nice. That’s not very respectful of Clara.” Zillah took the teacup belonging to Esmeralda and lifted it, too. “Or Titus. And Leo and Victor and Susan and Hector and, and Quentin and Rhoda and Una and Olive and Ida and Winnie and Xerxes and I guess Prue …” Zillah started to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks. “And Maud.” She finished off the gin in the cup and started to pour more for both of them. Her vision wobbled when she bent her head, and the gin went splashing onto the china tea plate instead.

“What are you doing?”

Zillah lifted her head. Dizziness sent her tipping backwards, rocking the chair, but she caught herself just before the point of no return, and set all four chair legs back on the floor. She blinked at the caretaker’s wife.

“Zillah, what are you doing?” The caretaker’s wife rushed over to the play table. She lifted the bottle of gin and shook it. Light splashes rose out of the nearly-empty bottle.

“Tea party with Clara,” murmured Zillah. Her head felt very heavy, and the rest of her felt very cold. She wondered if the caretaker’s wife was going to punish her for stealing. Perhaps she would throw her over the cliff — after all, there were no more witnesses to see her doing her dastardly deeds.

The caretaker’s wife bent over the table. “Zillah, look at me,” she said, pointing at the threadbare doll in the opposite chair. “That isn’t Clara. Clara is gone. Zillah, did you drink this all by yourself?”

Zillah tilted her head to inspect the bottle. It looked like the same one from which she had been drinking. "Yes," she answered finally. The eyes of the caretaker's wife widened.

A long, thin shadow appeared in the doorway, looming over Zillah in a way that, after a few seconds, she found alarming. "I heard you shout," said the caretaker. "Is everything all right?"

Zillah's head pounded, and the room swam. She shut her eyes in the hopes that it would make things stay still. Far away, she heard the caretaker's wife say her name; then, even more distantly, “Can we do anything for her?” Thick fingers gripped her wrist, feeling for her pulse. “I can’t find it. Help me.”

“I don’t think that I can. Not the way I would like.” The caretaker’s voice echoed around her.

A chair scraped back, or maybe Zillah fell over. She couldn’t quite tell. "Then I think you had better take her and leave,” said the caretaker’s wife, so quietly that Zillah nearly missed it. Zillah wondered what that meant, and if he would let her take Esmeralda with her when they left. She heard the caretaker's wife sniff, and then she felt the caretaker's bony hand upon her shoulder.

Her head cleared. She opened her eyes.

The caretaker smiled at her sadly. The light from the hallway cast deep shadows around him, making his face look strange and hollow. "I'm sorry," he said. "Good night, Zillah."

From the way that he said it, Zillah expected something to happen: given the turns that her life had taken of late, perhaps a quick snap of her neck. Instead, Zillah felt several layers of fear and sorrow slide off her shoulders to pool on the floor like rotting fungus, leaving her free to breathe for the first time in months. She stood up, and noticed that the caretaker's wife had vanished. She and the caretaker stood alone in the play room. The caretaker leaned on his staff, fingers curled around the top of its curved blade, and watched her. Zillah waited to be afraid of what would happen next, but it never got a chance to happen before she heard a familiar voice behind her.

"I always did say that ghosts were real." 

"Angels are real, too. I saw one when we went hiking yesterday, and I didn't even need to have a fit."

Well, maybe not quite alone. Zillah turned around, smoothing down the wrinkles on her favorite polka-dotted dress. Behind her, crowded into the doorway, and into the bedroom beyond, she could see figures — Boris and Susan and Hector and the rest — but they were supplanted by Titus, no longer a splatter on the wall, and Clara, whose sunken face had filled out once more. She held out a tray of cupcakes, lavishly decorated with frosting and dots of colored sugar.

"Baking isn't as easy as reading recipes, but I like it. Do you want to try one?" she asked.

"They're the best," promised Titus.

Zillah felt her heart expand — not to bursting, not too much, just enough to make her bounce on her feet. Still, she looked up at the caretaker first. "Are we allowed to eat sweets during the day now?"

The caretaker smiled. "This once, I think, yes," he said.


End file.
